Dr. Brian MacVicar is the Co-Director of the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health at the University of British Columbia. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience at UBC and is Professor and Head, Basic Neuroscience, in the Department of Psychiatry.

Outside of UBC, Dr. MacVicar is also a Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada (FRSC), and Fellow of The Canadian Academy for Health Sciences (FCAHS). In the past, Dr. MacVicar was the Director of the Leducq Foundation Transatlantic Network of Excellence, and the President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN), and was instrumental in guiding CAN to create a national neuroscience meeting and to establish a cohesive national identity for the neuroscience community.

Dr. MacVicar’s research has focused on the mechanisms required to maintain a healthy brain by finding ways to prevent neuronal damage. His work has provided new insights into potential targets for preventing brain damage via neuronal death during stroke.

Dr. MacVicar has been a leader in the development and application of advanced brain imaging techniques during his career. He discovered that brain tissue is more transparent in infrared wavelengths, which are used widely to visualize nerve cells in intact brain tissue. With Image Science, a company he founded, he developed software that was widely used to control scientific image acquisition equipment and imaging analysis.

The MacVicar lab has implemented two-photon microscopy and uncaging techniques to investigate and visualize complex interactions in the brain. The application of advanced imaging techniques has allowed his lab to make significant contributions to our understanding of how neuronal activity is regulated and how to protect nerve cells during stroke.